Word: could
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...legislature hasn't disregarded its popular vote and sent its own electors to Congress since 1876. But by joint proclamation with state senate president John McKay, Feeney can summon all state legislators to Tallahassee for a special session to do just that, even as early as this week. That could precipitate an almost unimaginable series of constitutional nightmares, from a divided U.S. Congress fighting over what to do with the Florida electors to the U.S. Supreme Court having to choose our next President...
...latest usurpation of their legislative power; the court has recently struck down a parental-consent abortion law as well as a law limiting death-row appeals. This prompted some Republicans to try expanding the number of judges on that court so they could pack it with their own. (They failed, just as Franklin Roosevelt did when he tried a similar maneuver with the U.S. Supreme Court.) A special legislative session picking Bush electors, using the original deadline as guidance, is a way of saying, in the words of Republican state senator Charlie Bronson, "Kiss my grits...
...indisputable that ballot-counting machines routinely fail to count many legitimate ballots. The Governor of Texas, one George W. Bush, signed a law treating dimpled chads as legitimate votes; the Republican candidate, George W. Bush, now realizes that only a desperate Democrat could take such a position. However, some ballots uncounted by the machines are legitimate by any standard. The Gore position is: in a tight race, let's count every legitimate ballot (and argue about the close calls). The Bush position is: throw them all away...
Imagine if a cousin of Al Gore's had called Florida for Gore on election night. Imagine if a Democratic secretary of state were determined to use her legendary "discretion" to shut off recounts while her man was ahead. Think what the Bush team could do with material like that. But they've done remarkably well with much thinner gruel...
Moreover, the court repeatedly defined its role as tribune of the unspoken plaintiffs, citizens whose votes have gone un(re)counted. Why then did it not order a recount of all the counties of Florida? If refusing to reconsider spoiled ballots disenfranchises voters of Palm Beach, how could the court tolerate residents of 64 other counties having their dimpled ballots languish forever in un-hand-counted obscurity...